Thursday, January 22, 2009

Gerda Steiner & Jorg Lenzlinger present: "Brainforest"

Brainforest is the name of a piece by Gerda Steiner & Jorg Lenzlinger, but I think it’s also a great way of describing the style that alot of their work has. Steiner was originally a wall painter and Lenzlinger was creating stalactite-like forms when they joined forces in 1997. The amount of detail in their large scale installations is incredible.

Brainforest is located in Kanazawa-hu's 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. People from Kanazawa (which is a ward in Yokohama, Japan) brought all of the materials together for this installation. It was sort of a community art project, directed by Steiner and Lenzlinger.Gardeners help in the search for various roots, and branches in the luscious forests.Three primary and secondary school classes made flowers out of plastic bottles and illustrated magazines.At a senior citizens' club members folded dice-shaped paper flowers, and a group involved in pressing flower petals gave them a present of birds.In the Kenrokuen Garden all the leaves are carefully swept up from the ground every day so that the moss can thrive. Art students then gild these leaves. They also gather abandoned telephone and computer cable from three different rubbish heaps. On the beach they found pieces of polystyrene, bits of nets, string and rope, and plastic of all kinds. And all of this was brought together to create something colorfully alluring.